


One Man's Touch

by jailikechai



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A little sweet, Castiel learns how to touch, First Time, Future Fic, M/M, a little sad, angel!cas - Freeform, fallen!cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 13:44:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4481462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jailikechai/pseuds/jailikechai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Touch was new to Castiel. The strange sensation of one physical object pressed against another was one that required a physical body. Castiel had never possessed a physical body before. His first moments experiencing the world through his vessel were a surprise and a delight, his mind cataloguing the millions of receptors and nerves carrying sensory information from his skin to his brain and back again. The feeling of a breeze moving the fine hairs on the back of his hands, the weight of clothing wrapped around his fragile, physical shell. The intricacies of the human nervous system were truly a magnificent creation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Man's Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Here's something new. And different. A little midnight stream-of-conciousness kind of thing, so, yeah, it's a little disjointed. I didn't even proofread it, it just felt like something that needed to come out. (And a tiny, tiny little hint of smut at the end!)

Touch was new to Castiel. The strange sensation of one physical object pressed against another was one that required a physical body. Castiel had never possessed a physical body before. His first moments experiencing the world through his vessel were a surprise and a delight, his mind cataloguing the millions of receptors and nerves carrying sensory information from his skin to his brain and back again. The feeling of a breeze moving the fine hairs on the back of his hands, the weight of clothing wrapped around his fragile, physical shell. The intricacies of the human nervous system were truly a magnificent creation.

He touched objects next. A knife. A book. Tables and walls and cups and phones and weapons and papers. Dead things that he could hold in his hands and use his touch to gather information about. Just a brush of his fingertips could tell him if a thing was hot or cold, soft or hard, resilient or fragile.

Then, he was touched. It was nothing special, nothing significant, just a hand briefly pressed to his shoulder, or perhaps his chest, maybe to nudge him out of the way. Castiel couldn’t remember exactly. At the time it had only registered as a new sensation, to have something - someone - reach out and touch him, instead of him being the one to make the connection. It was just one more experience to catalogue away in his repository of sensory information.

Castiel learned about the hardness of touch first. Fists swung in hate, and fear, and anger. The crunch of bone against bone, the tearing of flesh, the warm slipperiness of blood. His hand was a weapon; Castiel was a weapon. His touch brought death.

His touch brought healing. He learned this later, a touch of his fingertips to bruise-swollen foreheads tingling with the rush of Grace. A touch could be soft, a fist could unclench, and his hand did not have to be an instrument of destruction. He learned that he could choose.

There were so many different ways people could touch each other, Castiel realized slowly. The first time a strong pair of arms wrapped around him in a hug, he was startled and puzzled at the unfamiliar touch. It was different from the flurried exchanges of a fight, different from the diagnostic press of healing, different even from a companionable pat on the shoulder. To be held close by someone, his body pressed flush against another, was comforting and confining all at once.

Castiel's world was suddenly full of touch, and a the same time, starkly lacking in it. Two bodies could stand, inches apart, close enough to feel the heat of the other's pulse, smell the sweat on their skin, but never touch. An inch became an infinite gulf that Castiel could not cross, only stare across into the bottomless green depths on the other side.

At first it was just a hand, bridging the divide, a pat on the shoulder, or a clap on the back. A man reaching out, expressing solidarity with a brother-in-arms. Slowly, the touches changed. An arm slung around Castiel's shoulders, a slight weight across his neck and back that somehow felt heavy. The hand that used to pat his shoulder now lingered, perhaps adding a squeeze. Small touches between friends.

Castiel did not know why just the brush of one man's fingertips caused a tidal wave of heat and pleasure to crash through him, while a full-body hug from another man was nothing more than an uncomfortable constraint. He did not see why his body would react differently to stimuli provided by different sources. But although he did not understand the reasons, he could feel the results.

When he Fell, Castiel experienced pain. He had felt pain before, of course, recognizing the processes of the human brain of his vessel expressing discomfort, but he had never before experienced it. Pain was something that happened to his vessel, not to him. But all of a sudden, everything changed, and a whole new world seemed to open up before him.

Castiel touched, and he felt. He no longer tracked the racing of nerve impulses from skin to brain, he simply felt. Every touch was like the first. Pain, yes, heat that could burn, rain that could soak his clothes and cause him to shiver, the stinging prick of a needle breaking through his skin and tracing ancient words into his side. But not every touch was pain. There was the comfort of a soft blanket wrapped around him as he tossed and turned in unfamiliar sleep, the pleasant warmth of a hot cup of coffee held between chilled palms, the gentle kiss of a warm breeze ruffling his hair.

And there were the other touches, new touches. Lips to lips. Skin pressed against bare skin. Touches to parts of his body that no man or woman had touched him before. Touches that were terrifying, and exciting, and horrible, and wonderful. Castiel experienced it all.

He remembered how one man's touch made him feel things that touches from no other person could ever reproduce. He craved the sensation.

And everything changed again. And again, and again.

There was Grace, but the pain did not leave. Castiel knew what it was to feel, now. There was a beloved body held in his arms, but the embrace was not one of pleasure. There were beloved hands that met his skin, but not in friendship. Yet, somehow, Castiel still longed for the touch. One man's hands could still make Castiel feel things that no one else ever had, ever could, for better or for worse.

After a time, the pain was done. The tearing of skin, the slickness of blood, the crunch of bone; the first touches that Castiel remembered were set aside. They were replaced with soft touches, like the ones he learned at the beginning, but different. A hand to the shoulder that had once expressed companionship, now lingered perhaps a little bit too long. An arm across his shoulders that had once been a gesture of friendship, but now pulled him a little too close.

When Castiel stood toe to toe with the man who had been his friend, and his enemy, he no longer feared to cross the divide between them.

Castiel reached out.

He touched skin that was scarred, felt bones that had broken and healed a hundred times over, ran his palms over a body that was both intimately familiar and terrifyingly new. Perhaps his fingers brushed through a damp tear that rolled down a rough stubbled cheek, but he had learned enough not to comment on it. A beloved body captured in an embrace that was finally, finally returned in all the ways he desired. In hope, in comfort, in mutual passion and acceptance.

Castiel thought he knew what it was to feel lips against his own, to feel the heat and sweat and slick of skin against his, but he realized all too soon that he knew nothing. He had experienced nothing. There had never been any touches before this, only shadows and hints.

A calloused hand reached down between his legs to take his arousal in hand, and Castiel marveled at how he could feel that one touch in every part of his body at once. He reached out to reciprocate and everything he knew about touch was destroyed, because how could something be so soft and so hard at the same time?

He learned that his hands could now do something new. His hands, that had once been a weapon to destroy, and a tool to heal. Now his hands provided pleasure. With a stroke and a squeeze to the soft hardness in his palm, he could feel a twitch in his hand, a shudder rolling through the body pressed against his. In turn, he was touched in ways he hadn't imagined. Outside.

Inside.

Touches that moved, and built, and raced through him, nerves not just firing, but on fire. In the end, warm wetness that spattered in thick drops over his heated skin.

In the end, peace.

Touch was new to Castiel. He pressed the precious body that had been gifted to him close to another. It was a surprise, and a delight, and Castiel offered a prayer of thanks for every touch that had come before, preparing him for this.

He offered a prayer to the one truth that had always been true, that one man could make him feel in ways that no one else ever could.

"Dean."


End file.
